Through the technical wizardry of BigAdmin's engineering department, we have found a way to include BigAdmin content and resources into every build of every software environment on every computer. AND keep it updated.

You no longer need an internet connection. Nope. So you've got wireless? Big whup. We have the command line.

Even if you haven't downloaded a new version of software, your terminal window will display our latest content. And you thought Web 2.0 was cool.

If for some odd reason your particular terminal window doesn't display BigAdmin content, then someone has taken specific measures to disallow this functionality. Go directly to your manager, shake your fist, and shout "Why did you take BigAdmin out of my terminal window!"

If this does not have the intended effect, take advantage of the resume posting feature on our jobs board:

Monday Mar 30, 2009

Check out the new videos about Solaris optimizations for Intel, e.g. the Power Aware Dispatcher that automatically monitors and optimizes your system to maximize performance while minimizing power consumption. Also, Intel's
PowerTOP technology works with Solaris DTrace to let you monitor in real time how a system is taking advantage of new processor power-management features like Intel Turbo Boost. See Inside Engineering for more info.

Tuesday Mar 24, 2009

Is that a typo? No, I checked, and it's a 95% off deal: student discount on Solaris & Java Certification. These two packages can help you get entry-level certified on Sun Solaris and Java technologies. Student price is US$40.00 (or 95% off country list price), until June 30, 2009, for Sun Certified Solaris Associate (SCSAS) or Sun Certified Java Associate(SCJA).

Oh and BTW, if you are a coder, too: SunLabs is having a JavaFX Contest. First prize will be $25,000 and there is a student category. Up to 100 honorable mention prizes with a $25 Amazon Gift certificate.

Wednesday Mar 11, 2009

Sun is integrating SSDs across the Systems portfolio: Blades, CMT, x64 servers, etc. Try the Sun Flash Analyzer to see how SSDs can accelerate system performance. For more info on improving power and space efficiencies with Sun SSDs, see the Sun Flash Storage page. Or watch Ray Austin, Group Marketing Manager of Open Storage, explain the benefits of SSDs in a Sun Servers video on the Tech Resources page.

Thursday Feb 12, 2009

The Firmware Release hub on BigAdmin has FAQs, information about available releases, and other resources to help you manage Sun systems. Sun engineers recently expanded the FAQ and updated the release history with the 7.2.x patch for Sun Blade T6340 Server Module and XCP 1081 releases (see SPARC64 Enterprise Systems). Thanks, Bruce!

Tuesday Feb 10, 2009

With this tool, you can check to see whether the Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris OS can be installed on your x86/x64 systems. (If your devices are already shown on the Solaris OS Hardware Compatibility List or HCL, then you do not need to use this tool.)

The current version of Sun Device Detection Tool is designed to detect and run in the default language on your system. The GUI of the tool and the reports are generated in the corresponding language. The supported languages are English, simplified Chinese, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, traditional Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The informational web pages on the tool have been translated into Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese (see language icons).

Thursday Jan 29, 2009

You can now follow BigAdmin on Twitter and become a fan of BigAdmin on Facebook.

Personally, I objected to Twitter on principle when I first heard of it. I thought our attention span --hang on a sec the phone's ringing-- was already being --wow, that was a deer standing on the hood of my car-- splintered enough already by the incessant --damn, I forgot to update my wiki-- multi-tasking that has become a way of life for anybody in high tech.

But Constance our Content Manager/Editor, convinced me to look into it. She loves it, and twitters almost every day. I was surprised by the amount of good information that gets passed around. If you have any partitions left in your brain, check it out.

I only recently jumped on Facebook. I think my kids got me into it. Now I hang out there a few evenings a week. It's pretty cool. If you don't mind mixing some business in with your personal life, become a fan of BigAdmin. (I did.) So far we're just posting links to the new content on BiAdmin as we publish it, but you never know. If you'd like to see more, let us know.

Monday Jan 05, 2009

Our thanks to the team that updates our multilingual hub with useful resources in various languages. Many articles in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, and Spanish. And we have a few articles in Italian and German now.

And thank you to Yutaka Suzuki for updating the blog on Japanese documentation. For example:

Wednesday Dec 24, 2008

This article shows how to upgrade from Solaris 10 5/08 to the Solaris 10 10/08 release for SPARC platforms using Solaris Live Upgrade. The writers also describe manually creating a ZFS root pool, copying the UFS root file system into the ZFS root pool, and activating ZFS mirroring.

Thanks to the authors, Haim Tzadok and Cyril Plisko (who participate in the OpenSolaris community).

p.s. BigAdmin will be on winter break until January 5, 2009. Best wishes to all our readers for a happy and prosperous New Year!

Friday Dec 19, 2008

New features in the HCTS 4.2 release include support for OpenSolaris and support for hard drives with more than one terabyte capacity. Lots of good info has been updated: FAQ, Getting Started Guide (in HTML or PDF), Release Notes, README, and more.

The HCTS program is offered free so that independent hardware vendors (IHVs), system manufacturers, system integrators, and end users can certify their systems and components for the Solaris OS on x86 and x64 platforms. Certification tests for x86 and x64 products cover both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Certification tests cover both the Solaris 10 OS and update releases and the OpenSolaris OS and updated releases. For testing, use the latest release; after March 19, 2009, HCTS 4.1 test results will no longer be accepted.

All hardware that passes certification testing is eligible for the Solaris OS Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). The HCL shows systems and peripherals that are compatible with the Solaris OS. Currently, there are 1114 systems (1012 x86/x64 systems, 102 SPARC systems) and 1655 components listed. As of today, 3743 systems are listed for OpenSolaris.

As a sys admin, does Web 2.0 really affect you and the way you do your job? Find out more about Web 2.0 technologies and trends for sys admins. This new resource center has lots of good links, such as Sun customer case studies, or blogs like this one: "There is No Web 3.0, There is No Web 2.0 - There is Just the Web."

Thursday Dec 18, 2008

You can continue to run your business or favorite applications on the Solaris 8 OS, even though it will enter End of Service Life (EOSL) Phase 2 on April 1, 2009. EOSL Phase 2 means that all Solaris customers will continue to receive telephone support and access to patches developed before April 1, 2009, but they will not receive patches developed on April 1, 2009 or after. Even security patches. However, for those of you who want to continue running Solaris 8, Sun provides options -- see here for more info.

Tuesday Dec 09, 2008

We're happy to see a lot of reader comments in November and December (about 25 reader comments or author replies). The What's New and Recently Updated page on the BigAdmin wiki shows some recent changes made in response to feedback.

Monday Dec 08, 2008

Take a look at our updated Sun Gathering Debug Data (GDD) scripts. Gather your debug data before calling Sun Support to solve problems faster. Here are some examples, or you can check the complete list.

Pkgapp v 3.0 Solaris: This scripts collects libraries of any software that is useful for debugging core/gcores.

Sun GDD - Calendar Server - cscapture version 1.1:
This collects all parts of Sun Java System Calendar Server environment that are useful for debugging, such as log files, database, host environment, config and more. Also gathers core files and debugger data for core analysis. Available for Solaris 8, 9 and 10 (SPARC and x86 platforms).

Sun-GDD-N1SPS: This command-line tool is used to collect debugging data needed to troubleshoot problems and crashes of Sun N1 Service Provisioning System (N1SPS). The tool collects logs, process listings, thread dumps, and other useful information that can greatly help while troubleshooting N1SPS problems.

Friday Dec 05, 2008

Send us your scripts and tech tips, or submit useful links you have found, and you can earn BigAdmin Bucks. Use the Bucks for a 2GB USB memory stick, a nifty all-in-one tool, or other gifts. If you write something for us, you'll even be kind of famous -- it will show up in our newsletter (lots of readers), "BigAdmn" Twitter, the BigAdmin Collections, RSS, Facebook, etc.